The Shoes of Fortune. Munro Neil

lamp-red at his high cheek-bones, his hale eye gloated, his free hand flourished as in an exultation. His mate sat silent beside him on the stern-thwart, clearing the sheets: the crew, who had out the sweeps to keep the boat’s bows in the wind, made an effort to laugh at his jocosities, but clearly longed to be away from this tragedy. And all the time, I think, I stood beside the weather bulwark, surrendered to the certainty of a speedy death, with the lines of a ballad coming back again and again to my mind:

      An’ he shall lie in fathoms deep,

      The star-fish ower his een shall creep.

      An’ an auld grey wife shall sit an’ weep

      In the hall o’ Monaltrie.

      I thrust that ungodly rhyme from me each time that it arose, but in spite of me at last it kept time to the lap of a wave of encroaching sea that beat about my feet.

      My silence – my seeming indifference – would seem to have touched the heart that could not be affected by the entreaties of the seaman Horn. At least Risk ceased his taunts at last, and cast a more friendly eye on me.

      “I’m saying, Greig,” he cried, “noo that I think o’t, your Uncle Andy was no bad hand at makin’ a story. Ye’ve an ill tongue, but I’ll thole that – astern, lads, and tak’ the purser aboard.”

      The seamen set the boat about willingly enough, and she crept in to pick me off the doomed ship.

      At that my senses cleared like hill-well water. It was for but a second – praise God! my instincts joyed in my reprieve; my hand never released the cleat by which I steadied myself. I looked at Horn still upon the lower shrouds and saw hope upon his countenance.

      “Of course this man comes with me, Captain Risk?” said I.

      “Not if he offered a thousand pounds,” cried Risk, “in ye come!” and Murchison clawed at the shrouds with a boat-hook. Horn made to jump among them and, with an oath, the mate thrust at him with the hook as with a spear, striking him under the chin. He fell back upon the deck, bleeding profusely and half insensible.

      “You are a foul dog!” I cried to his assailant. “And I’ll settle with you for that!”

      “Jump, ye fool, ye, jump!” cried Risk impatient.

      “Let us look oot for oorselves, that’s whit I say,” cried Murchison angry at my threat, and prepared cheerfully to see me perish. “What for should we risk oor necks with either o’ them?” and he pushed off slightly with his boat-hook.

      The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. “Shut up, Murchison!” he cried. “I’m still the captain, if ye please, and I ken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any trifle we hae dune.”

      I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels in the Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again to the full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyes alarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution.

      “I stick by Horn,” said I. “If he gets too, I’ll go; if not I’ll bide and be drowned with an honest man.”

      “Bide and be damned then! Ye’ve had your chance,” shouted Risk, letting his boat fall off. “It’s time we werena here.” And the halliards of his main-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boat swept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony. From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap.

      “There’s the ither twa, Risk,” I cried; “it’s no’ like the thing at all to murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for.”

      He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to see Horn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed with a hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he found that two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers, rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similar condition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chance should be left of our escape from the Seven Sisters.

      It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in the west there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mile away the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, that final assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set. We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakage might be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, and in other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and a large bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain’s private locker, told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims.

      We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notion of what was next to do, and – speaking for myself – convinced that nothing could avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed full half a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but that I paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza went in my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days of my history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like a veil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered and caulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the tools from him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toil that finally left him in despair.

      “It’s no use, Mr. Greig,” he cried then, “they did the job ower weel,” and he shook his fist at the Kirkcaldy boat. He checked the gesture suddenly and gave an astonished cry.

      “They’re gone, Greig,” said he, now frantic. “They’re gone. O God! they’re gone! I was sure they couldna hae the heart to leave us at the last,” and as he spoke I chanced to look astern, and behold! a ship with all her canvas full was swiftly bearing down the wind upon us. We had been so intent upon our fate that we had never seen her!

      I clambered up the shrouds of the main-mast, and cried upon the coming vessel with some mad notion that she might fancy the Seven Sisters derelict. But indeed that was not necessary. In a little she went round into the wind, a long-boat filled with men came towards us, and twenty minutes later we were on the deck of the Roi Rouge.

      CHAPTER XIII

      WHEREIN APPEARS A GENTLEMANLY CORSAIR AND A FRENCH-IRISH LORD

      While it may be that the actual crisis of my manhood came to me on the day I first put on my Uncle Andrew’s shoes, the sense of it was mine only when I met with Captain Thurot. I had put the past for ever behind me (as I fancied) when I tore the verses of a moon-struck boy and cast them out upon the washing-green at Hazel Den, but I was bound to foregather with men like Thurot and his friends ere the scope and fashion of a man’s world were apparent to me. Whether his influence on my destiny in the long run was good or bad I would be the last to say; he brought me into danger, but – in a manner – he brought me good, though that perhaps was never in his mind.